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i’ve lived with window units before

I’m in my old apartment right now, borrowing someone’s wifi while I clean everything and take the last of my stuff. I don’t like being here. My new apartment is gorgeous and clean and has all the stuff I like in it. The kitchen is huge, and the bathroom is covered in green tile and has an old medicine cabinet with a slot for razor blades. Last night I opened all the windows and did the dishes to the sound of wind chimes and chirping crickets. Last night I also did laundry without having to wait for someone else to be done, and as I put the last load in I looked out the window at my assigned, covered parking space and sighed with happiness.

Tomorrow night I will walk to the grocery store.

If my landlady called tomorrow and asked me if I wanted to buy my new apartment, I’d…well, I’d probably say no, because we’re in THIS economy and I’m in THIS town and in THIS financial situation. But I’d really WANT to buy it, which I guess is my point.

So screw you, old apartment. Screw you for the following reasons:

1. You were built after 1980.

2. Despite your large parking lot, you never had a free space near my building unless I got home before 5 p.m.

3. You were too yellow.

4. You contained the following residents:

a) The guy who asked if I’d date his friend, who is the same guy who offered me cocaine.

b) The guy who asked me three times if I watched “the game.” What game?

c) The upstairs neighbors who stomped around as if wearing cement shoes, who are the same neighbors who threw water onto my patio, who are the same neighbors who broke some glass right outside my front door and did not clean it up.

d) The guy who kept his German shepherd locked on his patio.

e) The adjacent neighbors who had a video camera installed outside their front door (or they did until I reported them), who are the same neighbors who 1. had a food fight right outside their front door or 2. projectile vomited outside their front door. I couldn’t tell which.

f) Anyone who walked past my patio while I was sitting outside and chose to stare at me and/or talk to me and/or get into a shoving match with each other while I was trying to read or write something.

g) Various shouting people.

5. You are in the same complex as the apartment I lived in with my ex. Not that I feel negatively about it, but who wants that kind of reminder? It’s time to move on.

6. Your trash was always full.

7. Your recycling was very far away, as far away as the mailboxes.

8. You are in a neighborhood that doesn’t contain many things I like to do.

9. Your TV-antenna reception left much to be desired. I know, I’m a dinosaur, and this complaint will be obsolete in four months, but still!

10. Your sidewalks flooded every time it rained, which meant that after every rainstorm I had to consider what sort of shoes I could wear that would protect my feet from rainwater.

11. You only had three windows. THREE! (My new place has six.)

12. Your patio had a five-inch gap underneath the fence, so every time the landscapers came, they’d blow armfuls of leaves onto my patio.

Old apartment, I will miss your friendly landlord and your dishwasher and your central air and the size of your patio, but I will not miss anything else. I’m going to load up the last of my stuff and go home to play with the friendly cat who hangs out near my assigned parking space, take a bath in my green bathtub, and drift off to a nice, quiet sleep.

(Maybe a lot of this makes me sound like one of those creepy watchful neighbors who looks out the window through binoculars and writes down the license-plate numbers of suspicious people, but I’m not! I swear!)

Nothing obsolete about tv antennas! If you upgrade to digital, you’ll actually have a better picture than most of the pay services out there. I love my digital antenna. Augment that with Netflix, Hulu and Itunes, and you can watch more than you can stomach and pay close to nothing.